Guest view: Carnage in Vegas leaves nation reeling

This editorial was first published in The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, a fellow GateHouse Media publication. Guest editorials don't necessarily reflect the Daily Messenger's opinions.

The nation awoke Monday morning to the horrific news of another mass shooting — one that now ranks as the worst in modern American history.

By mid-afternoon, the death toll stood at 58. Another 515 were wounded. Details are still emerging, but we know that a lone gunman perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino opened fire on a county music festival being held below on the Las Vegas Strip, spreading terror and turning a glitzy desert city into a surrealistic scene out of a war zone.

Authorities identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree. Friends, stunned, say he professed no political or religious ideology.

In days to come, America will wonder what caused a man to suddenly break and devise a plan to inflict such evil. Today, families are grieving. Others may still be waiting to hear from loved ones who’d planned on attending the three-day music festival that drew 22,000 music lovers.

We share the pain of Las Vegas and all those across the country who are suffering. We pray for those recovering from injuries and for those who will live forever with the terror of this night. But we urge people not to jump to conclusions until the facts are determined.

This much is clear, however: The number and severity of mass shootings in recent years has gotten much worse, according to a new Washington Post analysis. Here are a few of the mass killings: In 1999, two students kill 13 victims at Columbine High School in Colorado; in 2012, Adam Lanza’s rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, kills 26, including 20 children; in 2015, Syed Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik kill 14 at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California; also that year, Dylann Roof opens fire killing nine people at a church prayer meeting at a Charleston, South Carolina; and in 2016, 49 die when Omar Mateen opens fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Each massacre seemed unthinkable. The scale of the carnage on Sunday forces Americans once again to recognize that this nation has a gun-violence problem unlike any other.

For all of the certainty expressed on social media on Monday, no easy fixes exist for senseless violence. There are a number of solutions that can make things better, and they deserve consideration: better mental-health treatment, regulations making it harder for mentally ill and previously violent people to own guns, aggressive enforcement against illegal sales.

But before any progress can be made on those fronts, Americans must address the deep cultural rift that makes the problem so difficult to even talk about. Gun-rights advocates and opponents know little about each other and understand even less. That tends to rule out reasonable conversation.

But the fact of at least 58 lives lost in a matter of minutes, plus hundreds injured, demands that the two sides do more than yell at each other.

The way to truly show caring for the Las Vegas victims is to put aside the blind and inflexible attitudes that have kept relief from this terrible curse out of reach.

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